Once the technology developed, I see it as a bit of a threat to the skill involved with photography. I could see myself in and old rocking chair saying "I remember the days when you were stuck with one focal point. Once you took the photo, that was it!"

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I'm no theorist but I will theorise that the Lytro's rather pathetic 1MP best case output resolution is symptomatic of an underlying issue. For the camera to capture DoF information one has to be asking it to capture a lot more information about the field of view than a regular photograph and that, to my untutored mind, means that the signal to noise ratio is being squeezed in the wrong direction. It may just be that a "Light Field" camera that can deliver the silky smooth IQ we all crave would require such enormous light gathering power to achieve, say, 15MP output resolution that the final size of the camera would be impractical. I hope I'm wrong...

I don't think people are under-estimating the technology's potential, but they can't get really enthused until it makes a significant improvement into a tangible product. I'm sure we wouldn't say no to a Star Trek holo-imager thingy that captures the whole "beyond 3D" environment in an instant, but we're some way off that I think...

By "beyond 3D" I mean, what we have now only offers depth information from roughly one viewpoint. With multiple viewpoints you could reconstruct the whole environment, not just what you get from one viewpoint.

Is the out of focus effect not made by software? I mean, Ive used a great pocket camera, with a fixed lens and quite big aperture. If youre interested, it's the Traveler DC-5080.
What I wanted to say though, is that it doesnt have AF and everything after 0,8 meters is sharp. Couldnt that be the same case with this camera? I know software which can blur pictures in that way people would think youve got a shallow DOF...